The latest addition to my website is Eduardo Mendoza‘s Una comedia ligera (A Light Comedy) . It set in the late 1940s, in and around Barcelona, as with most of Mendoza’s work. Our hero is Carlos Prullàs, a popular and successful playwright, who writes light comedies. We follow him around for a long while – food, women, gossip – when, about halfway through the book, there is a murder and he is the prime suspect. In usual Mendoza style, there is complex investigation, with Carlos coming in touch with all strata of Barcelona society and Mendoza mocking them. With dirty deeds in high places, a royalist plot and Carlos almost getting murdered himself, the second half is definitely more lively than the first. The book has been translated into English but is long since out of print.